


Liver

by synergenic (Losseflame)



Series: The Essentials [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Armin needs therapy, M/M, an emotionally challenged bitchy mother hen, disturbing fluff?, levi knows what's up, my headcannon is that Jean is a bitchy mother hen, there are no healthy relationships in snk huzzah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:33:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losseflame/pseuds/synergenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren shakeshudders, draws his head back, slams it against the stone that stole the sky from him.  It will break eventually.  Everything can be broken eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liver

Slamming against the thing that blocks the sky from him again, he howls, angryscared _hungry_. 

“Eren,” he hears, and he knows that sound, the one that starts open before the rough catch of tongue touched to teeth, meandering back into the same open sound that is cut off with an edged hum made when the smaller ones pressed their teeth together somehow, in a way that his won’t. 

It’s the sound they make when they want him to look at them. 

He shakeshudders, because the stone is still there, still all around him and there is no sky, no ground, no meat, just stone and metal and cold and hunger. Draws his head back, slams it against the stone. It will work eventually. Everything can be broken eventually. 

“Eren,” the sound happens again, behind him, but this time it’s a different sort of voice making that sound. It’s _Her_ , and he feels the strange swirl of warm inside him, warmer than the feel of meat going smooth down his throat and filling the empty, somehow. It makes him turn around, lope over to where the thick metal sticks are ominously pressing him back into the stone.

She is standing there, and he feels the warm burble up his chest and out his throat, making his voice twist and ripple from him. There is another one, small and darkpale beside her, but he ignores that one, sticking his arm between two of the metal sticks – flinching when his skin touches one accidentally; they are so _cold_ – and grasping the brown lines that are attached onto Her, using them to draw Her closer. 

She is so small, he thinks sadly; She must be so _hungry_ to be so small, the emptiness shrinking Her down. 

Feed the hunger, become stronger, and he thinks about maybe giving Her the darkpale one to eat, to make Her stronger and bigger and more difficult to be eaten.

But as he thinks it, he jerks, slamming one hand into the side of his head when His voice starts in his head, murmuring the other sound. _No_. The one that means no eating, no meat, and he doesn’t know why He likes it when he’s hungry but He seemed so _upset_ when he tried to eat, before.

He does not reach for the darkpale one. 

“Eren?” She makes the noise, and he makes a noise back. He is looking at her. What else does that noise mean?

“Please let go, Eren, we can’t open the cell this way,” She babbles, nonsense winding it’s way out of Her mouth. He tilts his head to the side, looking at Her as he tries to realize what She wants. 

It is not food. None of them seem to want proper food.

“Fuckin’…. Whatever, he’ll figure it out,” the darkpale one gurgles, and then he is stepping close to the metal sticks, close to _him_ , and when he shrinks back – do not eat do not eat so _hungry_ do _not eat_ – She breathes a huffed breath, body pressing up to the metal sticks.

Then a section of the metal sticks starts to part, breaking away and three of the metal sticks brush his arm. Yelping, he stops holding Her, backing away instinctively from the burning cold. His back hits the hollow made where two sections of stone meet, and the stone overtop of him slinks lopsided, so when he shudders his head strikes the rock above him as well. 

Wailing, he drops to the ground to hide, throwing his arms over his neck so the sky-stealing stone can’t get to it.

“Oh, Eren, it’s alright, it won’t hurt you, I promise,” She jabbers, voice all soft and warm and good, like the feel of his fingers tearing through the fragile stomach of meat. Her tiny, halfway cool hands – more proof of how starved they all are – touch his shoulder, pat his head. “I’d never let anything hurt you and that isn’t going to change now. It’s alright.”

“He can’t understand you, brat.” 

“He can understand _tone_ , and he knows his name.”

Whining, he shakes his head at all of the strange, twistrippling sound in the air, and then Her noises fall into something sane, gentle purrs that tell him he’s safe.

He isn’t sure why She is trying to tell him so – the sky is _gone_ , he is surrounded by stone and cold and he is _hungry_ – but he tucks himself close to her tiny legs, curling around them and pressing his face to her soft belly, over her womb.

Hands tangle into his hair, Her soft cooing continuing as She scratches his scalp. 

Frowning, he snarls under his breath when that makes him remember something, a memory rising as an ache in his skull. Warm hands doing the same, but those hands are like his, properly made, and he can feel two others curled up around him, the third gently working through his hair crouched above them all. 

He whimpers. The memory makes him lonely.

She is shifting, her thin limbs moving under him and he snorts, irritated, as she rises. She bears her teeth happily at him, and he opens his mouth, curling his lips back to do the same. 

“That’s fuckin’ horrifying.” The darkpale one makes a buzz of noise that She doesn’t react well to, clipping sounds at that one sharply in a way that makes him snarl his pleasure. 

She may be small and cool and empty, but She is still stronger than anyone else would be, small and cool and empty. He knows, somehow. 

Grabbing his wrist with both of Her hands, She begins to lead him from the stone hollow, careful when leading him through the opening in the metal sticks so that they don’t touch him. He gurgles, leaning close to Her and fitting his teeth gently over Her shoulder, biting down affectionately. Taking one hand from his wrist, She pats his head again, and he coos at Her, pressing his nose to Her cheek and breathing in.

“You two are the creepiest siblings I’ve seen in my goddamn life, and I’ve met twins.” The darkpale one’s voice drawls all thickly through these sounds, and he can’t understand the feel of it. It’s all edged like anger but isn’t harsh enough, has something like pleased humming under it, but no happiness to _make_ it pleased. 

It unsettles him, and he places his hand around the darkpale one’s jaw, grunting as he holds it closed. Something burning starts in the darkpale one’s black eyes, and he recognizes something _challenging_.

This, he understands, and he growls low in his throat, thinking of how stupid this one must be, to think that he can challenge _him_ , when he is tall and strong, not thin and cold and weak. 

“Eren,” She voices, and She is telling him to look at Her but also not to challenge this tiny pale thing, sound curved like She’s worried for _him_.

He pauses, thinking about how _easy_ it would be to grip until the skull is crushed, about how _good_ the meat would taste, not like the furred brown thing that He’d let him eat before. 

“Eren,” She hums again, sounding like she is _entreating_ him now. 

Eren huffs, letting go. Breathing deep, She starts up a jagged hill of stone, and he fumbles, feet catching on the cold, varying levels of rock and falling onto it, feeling his nose break into his face sharply and press deep into his skull. He snorts – the effect with his nose as it is sprays blood far out over the stone hill – and shakes his head to clear it, spreading his hands and adjusting his feet to crawl carefully up the hill, following Her steps. 

The darkpale one walks behind him. 

…

She takes him through series of stone hollows, passing by others and he thinks it’s strange, how some start pacing away from them and others call out the sound, making his head whip around as he tries to look at them. 

The ones that do so start walking with Her and him, jabbering at him at times but mostly babbling at Her, who natters back with a voice that sounds like how first blood tastes. 

It’s all very loud and confusing, and he grunts, clasping the sides of his head to try and make it work faster. Hunger is burning low in his belly, making it hard, and he stops as slow-creeping overwhelming pressure fills his skull, trickling into the rest of is body and freezing it.

A low growl sparks in his throat, doesn’t stop, and the ones that have surrounded him all stop too, quiet.

“If he’s gonna try to fuckin’ eat us again, I’m done. Out.” One with hair that is dark and hair that is light hacks these sounds, spits them with something rough-roiling and hot in them. 

“We’re just confusing him, Jean. Everything must be so confusing to him right now,” another voice sighs, soft and sweet like liver, and then one of them steps in front of him.

He reels back, snorting and grunting in surprise, because – because this one has all of His colouring, yellow and blue and pink-white, but he can smell the womb in her, smell another wombed one all over her skin and He had only smelt like Himself and him, as was right. Tilting his head, he crouches till his face is in level with hers, frowning as he huffs in her scent, poking her face and touching her hair with his fingers – softly. 

He wants to be gentle with her, and he doesn’t know why. This irritates him, makes him growl low in his throat, and when a brown-coloured one twitches toward them, a soft, pink-white hand is raised, stilling the figure. 

Her teeth are bared gently, and he returns the gesture, though he doesn’t have to open his mouth as wide this time. 

“I’m not Armin,” she coos, and he perks, hearing the sound that means Him. Raising his head, he glances around, swivelling his neck to see where He is. “Eren,” she voices, and he looks back to her. She grasps his face in both of her hands. “Armin isn’t here right now, but that’s alright. He will be soon, okay?”

The sound flings itself higher at the end, and he snorts, confused. She makes a rhythmic, hitching breath-throat sound, her shoulders shaking with it, and then she tosses her head from side to side softly.

“Let’s go outside, Eren. You’ll feel better once you’re outside,” she gurgles, curling one hand around two of his fingers and starting to walk, tugging him behind her. Beside him, She makes a sound like rot in her throat, but she is soft and sweet like liver and he likes her, continues to walk behind her obediently.

Yellow and blue makes him want to listen, because yellow and blue means safety and leader and kind and food found. He does not know why, but the instinct is under his bones and hasn’t made him hurt beyond hunger yet, and he is used to feeling hungry.

He does not know why he is used to feeling hungry, either.

Wood embedded in rock is ahead of them, imposing and solid, and she keeps walking toward it, like she’ll simply pass through. He huffs and growls, pulling her back by her grip on him. 

She should not smash into them; they’re all odd in that they keep bleeding once they’re hurt, wounds don’t just burn themselves away like they should. 

“Oh, Eren, those are doors,” she chirps nonsense, trying to walk forward again and Eren grunts, tugging her back firmly. 

Taking a few striding steps forward, She walks in front of them both and places Her hands on the wood, a ripple of strength going from Her shoulders down Her arms and then –

Then the wood splits in half, and yawning behind it is a gush of air that brings the scent of sky and ground and space to him, a square view of green edged with blue on top. 

Eren _howls_ , tugging himself away from her and galloping toward Her, scooping Her up in his arms as he leaps over another sloping stone hill. Grass is crushed beneath his feet when he lands, and he tosses back his head, yelping as he runs with his face toward the sky. She is making the breath-throat sound that the other one did before, now, curling Her arms around his neck and clinging to him.

He tosses himself onto his back, looking up at the wide spread of blue and white with his happiness winding its way out of his mouth in sound. Wriggling his back to feel the ground below him, he throws his hands up, twisting his fingers and rolling his wrists and watching the shape they make against the sky. She is small and cool upon him, and he curls one of his arms around her as he heaves onto his feet again.

The others are standing around them, and he stops moving to look at them curiously, twisting and turning on the balls of his feet.

“Aw, fuck, I forgot the horse,” the light-dark one burbles, and ragged groans rise from those that hadn’t made noise. Grunting, he shakes his head, disliking how it sounded like hurt. He does not like the sound of hurt coming from them, doesn’t like it in a way that makes a memory start scratching at the inside of his skull, weakly. “Don’t goddamn bitch, just amuse him for like two minutes while I go get it.”

Then the light-dark one turns neatly and starts walking away, and he is about to make a noise of protest and stop him – he _likes_ them all, now that he is used to how loud they are, and so they should _stay with him_ – when the brown-coloured one steps forward, pushes his hip hard enough to make him sway.

He frowns, and she bears her teeth sharp-happy. “Try to catch me, dumbass.” 

She runs a good distance away from him, looking over her shoulder expectantly. “ _Catch_ me, fucker.” 

He wails with happiness when he realizes that she is playing chase with him, dropping Her and lolloping after the brown-coloured one, who laughs and runs faster than any of the other ones, sort of rough like him. The others have started making a riotous amount of sound, running as well and he gurgles at how they’ll run by him and brush their hand by his side, calling out the same noises the brown-coloured one used to ask him to chase her. 

They’re _all_ playing chase with him, he realizes with another yelp, running in dizzying circles, crisscrossing in front of him and then behind, and he is faster than all of them but they are clever, distracting him by turn. He takes to simply grabbing them up in his arms and then tossing them lightly away to show he’s caught them, and they laugh before scrambling to their feet again, to continue the game. 

…

In his bed, Armin continues to stare blankly at the wall ahead of him, listening to the sound that drift from his window with a deep, twisted ache tangled up in his ribcage. He hears Eren vocalizations, hears Sasha taunting him about how he’ll never catch her until it breaks off with a squeal of laughter, hears Connie shout for revenge until his voice also breaks off with a squeak, higher in pitch than Sasha’s. 

Armin can’t make his heavy limbs take him there, no matter how much he knows he should descend.

They’ve been worried; he knows they’ve been worried. He hasn’t spoken to any of them but Jean since they returned, hasn’t left his room. 

He can’t. Not with how he feels when people look at him now, like they’re imagining him chewing on heart. 

“Yo,” Jean breezes in, drawling his greeting. “Come get Eren’s horse meat with me.” 

Armin shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

His voice is a low, tired rasp. Jean snorts, grabbing his blankets and yanking them off the bed. The fact that Armin is naked under them doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. “Of course you are, you’re fuckin’ peachy. Get up, get dressed.” 

His hands are on his hips. His foot is tapping the ground.

Armin is so tired.

“Please,” he says, and his voice breaks. Jean throws a pair of pants at his head. 

“Armin, get. Up. I’m not bringing you any more food, or water in a bucket to wash the grime off, or whatever. I’m gonna make you get up.” There is no pity in his voice, no softness, and Armin remembers how there never was, not even when Jean lead him numbly to their room after the expedition, pushing others away when they got too close and sheltering him from the looks, the whispers. Not even he sat Armin down, put a bucket between his knees and helped him retch up heart, not even when he helped Armin wash and dress and crawl into bed.

“Jean…” Armin pleads, heavy limbs and dark thoughts and tired mind paralyzing him. 

“I will dress you. I will dress you like a child, Armin. You’re getting up now.”

Shuddering, Armin curls into a ball. It’s the first time he’s moved in hours, and his muscles protest this mightily. 

“ _Why_?” he whines, tears pricking in the back of his eyes and he bites his tongue till blood.

“Because I’m not fucking loosing you too, idiot. And you’re fading here,” Jean says simply, tossing a shirt onto the bed before he grips Armin’s shoulders and heaves him upright, propping him against the wall. Armin sways as blood rushes from his head, black spots dancing in his vision. “So, are you gonna _get_ dressed or am I gonna dress you? Because either way you’re going to be leaving this room, clothed and good to go.” 

“I hate you,” Armin whimpers. Jean shrugs, looking largely unbothered by that. 

“Fine by me. Put some fuckin’ pants on.”

…

The horse is lame, entirely useless, but Armin still feels guilty as he bridles her, scrubbing her ears and murmuring sweet things to her. 

“It’s for Eren,” Jean says, and Armin hates how that is enough to soothe some guilt. 

“I know,” Armin replies simply. 

Pausing, Jean shifts from foot to foot, looking awkward as Armin leads the horse out of her stall. “Um. We won’t – we.” He sighs, scrubbing his hair with his hands. “We’ve talked about it and we’re not gonna let him feed you, this time. We made plans.” 

The words are said rushed, like he had to force them out quickly before the bravery to say them faded.

Armin feels a cold, dark fear slink through his bones at those words, because he hadn’t even – he hadn’t even _thought_ about it as he bridled the horse, just thought about how Eren needed this, how that made the sacrifice worth the price for Armin.

He isn’t sure if he can do it again, but he is doubly unsure that any plan to get between Eren and his obsession to see Armin fed is a good one. 

“I’ll do what I need to do to keep everyone safe.” _To keep Eren safe._

“Fuck that, man. We won’t let him do that to you again.” 

And Armin bristles at the tone of Jean’s voice, making it seem like it was an _attack_ , like Eren was trying to harm him. Like Eren is a danger to him.

“He didn’t do it to hurt me,” he says sharply, feeling purpose surge through his limbs again. 

“And that makes it okay?” Jean snipes back, and Armin can’t answer before someone does it for him. 

“No, not at all, and you’re right when you say it won’t happen again.” The Corporal says from the entrance of the stable, the Commander behind him, sleeve pinned as it is when he isn’t wearing his prosthetic. “Hurry the fuck up, the game of tag is starting to get violent.”

“Stop assessing him with humanity’s measuring sticks,” Armin hisses, feeling something frenetic and cruel and protective curdle in his chest. “He isn’t thinking like us right now.” 

All three stop to look at him, the Corporal’s expression dead and dry, the Commander’s unreadable, Jean’s red and indignant. 

“So _fucking_ what? Doesn’t mean he gets to do whatever he wants to you.” 

Armin grits his teeth, because none of them _understand_ , none of them but Mikasa. He opens his mouth, and the Corporal cuts him off.

“Look, this is an argument that’s gonna take more time than we have right now. Can it, and take the fuckin’ horse to Wonder Boy.”

Clenching his jaw tighter, Armin nods, tugging gently at the bridle and walking roughly in the direction that the sound of tag is coming from. Jean jogs to walk slightly ahead of him, angled to shield Armin.

God, why won’t he let Armin just be _pissed_ at him?

“Fuck you,” he says, feeling petty and angry. 

“Name the time and the place, babe,” Jean replies without missing a beat.

Armin snarls and doesn’t say anything else after that.

…

When Armin turns the corner that leads to the grassy yard Eren and the others are caterwauling in, Eren freezes, downwind from Armin, before he snaps his head around, locking his gaze onto Armin’s figure.

Armin raises a hand in greeting, wondering if Eren will go for him or the horse first, and Jean grumbles. Behind Eren, Mikasa smiles at him brilliantly, lighting up in a way that he only sees very, very rarely, and Armin is lost to wordlessness at the rise of complicated emotion this puts in his gut. 

He never wanted to hurt Mikasa, when he’d closed himself away. 

His thoughts are cut off as Eren thumps into him, curling hot arms around him and lifting him to press him close, Eren’s chin resting on top of his head while he chirrups.

“Ahahahaha, Eren’s happier to see you than he was to get outside,” Sasha sings, stepping up to the horse and taking her bridle off. “Eren shouldn’t eat this. It might cause indigestion. Can he get indigestion?” 

Armin wheezes out a breath in response, Eren’s hold too tight to allow for actual words.

“How the fucking fuck should anyone know that, Sasha?” Jean replies for him, and she shrugs. 

“I was just asking, Jean, jeez. Eren!” When she chirps Eren’s name, Eren turns fully to look at her, keeping his hold on Armin. Sasha jumps, landing in a dramatic pose that directs ones gaze to the horse on account of her widespread arms. “Come get breakfast! This is alllllllll yours!” 

The horse doesn’t even have time to react as Eren drops Armin and leaps upon her, ripping open her neck with both hands.

Eren begins to maul the corpse, messier even than the first time Armin had seen him eat this way. He tears limb from limb, rending flesh with clawed hands and smashing it into his mouth, making loud, satisfied noises all the while. 

“Wow, I guess he was hungrier today,” Sasha says cheerily, entirely unaffected.

“Yeah,” Jean replies, tense, and Armin watches as the 104th squad moves in the yard, a few making a ring around Eren as he eats, a few making a ring around Armin, a few standing between them cautiously. 

“Don’t say anything,” Jean grits, sending a look in Armin’s direction. Armin swallows harshly, feeling dissonance ring in his chest at this reaction.

At how Mikasa is the one standing directly in front of him, shielding. 

The plan goes unused, though, because when Eren’s sound begin to quiet down and they all turn to look at him, he’s left with a red-tinged, gummy skeleton, sucking the brains out of the skull and no uneaten heart to be seen.

“That’s unexpected.” Sasha is still cheerful. “He must have been _much_ hungrier today.”

The hollowed skull thrown to the ground, Eren surveys what is left of his meal, making a distressed noise as he parses through the remains. He whips his head to Armin again, tears through the bones more fiercely, and then howls, neatly ripping into his face with clawed fingers.

“Eren!” Armin and Mikasa cry in unison, and their squad members clear the ground between them and Eren. Clutching his hands to his face and crooning softly at the ground, Eren shudders, and Armin _aches_ for him.

“Eren, I promise it’s alright,” Armin murmurs the words, and something in his tone must strike Eren, because his shoulders stiffen, and he looks to Armin, wide mouth pursed and brow knit in a surprisingly human expression of contemplation.

Then he yelps, rising so quickly Armin can feel the people behind him flinch, gathering up the bones in his arms in a way that is horrifying familiar.

_No, Eren. Please don’t_ , Armin prays.

Eren begins to lope toward him, eating the space between them quickly, and Armin feels deep fear writhe in his stomach like maggots when he drops the remains at Armin’s feet, when he crouches and begins to dig a hole, glancing at Armin every so often with something writhing and frenetic in his eyes. 

A roar begins in Armin’s ears, slinking down and stiffening his muscles up, freezing him in place. Eren would have had to learn to bury bodies from someone.

It seems that the Commander as the same thought as Armin, because when Eren begins to pat down the earth like he must have seen Armin do, looking at Armin desperately for approval, Commander Erwin walks to stand before Armin.

“Armin,” he says kindly, gesturing to where Eren has finished hiding a body. “I want you to explain that.”


End file.
